PLANTS' ENDING
November 2019
Plastic bags, plants
Exhibition / By leavers we live, Tent Gallery
“Suppose that the worst has happened. Human extinction is a fait accompli... Picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished... Might we have left some faint, enduring mark on the universe? ... Is it possible that, instead of having a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?”
– Alan Weisman’s The World without Us (2007)
Without humans in this world, would other creatures miss us? I hope other creatures will miss us. Although we have a dominant position in the current world and are manipulators of interest thoughts, they will also feel regret for the disappearance of life after witnessing the extinction of human beings. Conversely, when other creatures become extinct, we will also commemorate them in a specific way.
In today's world, people's deforestation and misuse of land lead to the continuous reduction of forests and desertification of the land. If peo- ple's behavior has been going on like this, then it is very likely that after hundreds of years and thousands of years, trees and green vegetation may not exist in the world.
Fresh-keeping bag maybe an appropriate method. They are used for fresh food. Plants, leaves and branches are in fresh-keeping bags, they are preserved. With labels, they look like the plant specimens. From distance, these plants seem to float in the air, but on closer look, the sealing lines could be observed. This is a method that I think is correct and a last resort. It's more like The Svalbard "Doomsday" Seed Vault in Norway. In order to prevent plant extinction, 100 million seeds from 100 countries are stored there.
I believe this piece will offer audience a visual distinction to bring people back to reality: this may really be the end of the plant, and we will miss them in such a way thousands of years later. On the day when there is no real green plant, we only can miss plants in this form, which also seems to be a ridiculous behaviour. The loss of plants will be understood emotionally and morally and stated about our relationship with them. When we miss the plants by making specimens, will we reflect on the destructive behaviour we have done to them? Will we stop to remember them solemnly? If we go back in time, would we treat nature this way when we re-intervene in this world?